Is it possible to raise children without enforcing them?
Cami Davila (She/Her) // Crew Writer
Livvy Hung (She/Her) // Illustrator
Do you want kids? This question has been in my mind since I was very young, mainly because society has imposed on us that it’s our duty as women. I’m still not sure what my answer is. I mean, I would love to be a mom, but I’m not sure it would be responsible to have a child in the world we live in today.
Among all the questions and concerns that I have about the lives of my future kids, recently I have been thinking over and over again about one day having kids. I am a queer woman. I have only ever fallen in love with women and my gender expression is not one that people expect women to have. I have always struggled with my identity, questioning which box of the gender binary I’m supposed to fit into. Fortunately, I have been surrounded by people who don’t judge me, and I have had the pleasure to live in countries more open-minded than my own.
Here’s the truth: we live in a world dominated by gender roles and binaries, and sometimes they are the only lens through which we understand the world. Hopefully, we will continue to progress over time, and things will keep moving forward little by little . . . But, will my child ever be free from the social standards of gender roles?
Is it possible for new and future parents to raise their children without imposing gender roles?
Matthew Arthur is an instructor in the Department of Women & Gender Studies at Capilano University. He has an MA in Indigenous and Inter-Religious Studies and is a PhD candidate in Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies. We spoke on the phone in late November, and I asked him for his perspective on the intersection between education and gender roles.
What do we understand as gender roles?
“When I teach about gender roles in 100-level Women’s and Gender Studies classes, we always start with Judith Butler’s idea of gender performativity. Our actions, behaviors and the things we wear are all creating gender all the time,” he says, “What interests me about gender roles is how they are both a kind of attitude that people have, but they’re also a material practice. I think about how you can walk into a supermarket and you can see products that are marketed toward different genders, and that have, in a way, built-in social expectations for how people should act, how they should look and so on.” Gender roles even begin before the baby is born, at gender reveal parties or at baby showers.
“If I imagine myself as a parent, I think it would be very complicated,” said Arthur when asked if it is possible to raise children without enforcing gender roles. “I would feel torn between the world as it is and the world in the way that I want it to be or I imagine it to be. For any parent, there’s probably a lot of worry and uncertainty about not really knowing how to support gender differences or gender diversity in children.”
There are small actions that parents can take at home to ‘resist’ these binary gender roles, starting by analyzing all the ways gender is constructed. What should they wear; how should they act; what toys should they have, what behaviors are ‘allowed?’ And, in that way “we can reimagine them.”
“If I were a parent, that might look like really respecting the autonomy of my child. Respecting that my child has agency or the power to make decisions and create meaning for themselves. I would entail really carefully listening to what they’re interested in and what they might want and letting them, in a way, take the lead on some of these things that are socially gendered,” claims the professor.
But, gender roles aren’t learned only from parents; teachers also have an enormous influence. Parents can try to create a gender-free environment at home, but it doesn’t help much if children are learning things at school that reinforce gender stereotypes. Therefore, teachers also have a responsibility to challenge these stereotypes.
Arthur has noticed that students and teachers in early childhood education programs at CapU care a lot about this topic and they are doing important work around gender. However, this is an uphill fight within the current socio-political context.
“In British Columbia, we have SOGI education: that’s Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity education built into K-12 education and there are lots of groups fighting to remove that from schools. I consider it important to acknowledge some of the really meaningful things that we’re doing to challenge these gender roles are really under fire.”
The current political situation in the United States presents a strong opposing influence on this issue. According to Arthur, whenever laws targeting LGBTQIA2+ communities or restricting abortion and reproductive autonomy are passed in the U.S., a wave of backlash follows in Canada.
Although there are many factors we can’t individually control, there are actions that parents and educators can take to at least create a safer space for the future generation. Arthur makes it very clear: the social construction of gender it’s not something we’re born with. It’s a set of social practices.
Therefore, if we created them collectively, then we can also eliminate them.